Android’s Jellybean version dominates Gingerbread in OS fragmentation

Most of us carry Android phones around, we don’t even mind what versions they are on as long as they have the right specs and apps we are looking for. Well the latest major version of Android, known as Jelly Bean, is now the most widely used variant of the platform, according to new statistics from Google.

Monday’s release of the company’s bi-weekly usage figures, which are based on the number of Android devices visiting the Google Play Store, showed that versions 4.1.x and 4.2.x accounted for a collective 37.9 percent of Android users, compared to 34.1 percent for versions 2.3.3 2.3.7.

Gingerbread, which was released in late 2010, has long been the dominant version of the software, despite the subsequent debut of Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean creating a substantial degree of fragmentation in the operating system.

This fragmentation has been a longstanding complication for Android developers, who must work to ensure that their projects are compatible with several different versions of the platform. The news that Jelly Bean has superseded the out-of-date Gingerbread has been hailed as an important step in fixing the problem.

A further update of Jelly Bean to version 4.3 is thought to be planned for later this this year, and the widely-anticipated release of version 5.0 ( “Key Lime Pie”) is expected to take place in late 2013.